Talk Talk / Asides Besides / 1988
It's Getting Late In the Evening
wistful, tenuously hopeful, tinged with melancholy
A brief, hymn-like piece built around a single nautical metaphor: setting sail into an uncertain sky while insisting that a coming storm will somehow be weathered by collective goodwill. It reads as a small parable about choosing hope, or the performance of hope, in the face of loss.
exile and displacement faith versus self-deception collective salvation the sea as metaphor for uncertainty consolation
Who's speaking
A first-person voice addressing a companion or lover directly, reassuring them (and perhaps itself) that departure and hardship can be endured. The tone is intimate but the reassurances feel effortful, almost willed into being rather than certain.
What happens
The song opens on a scene of departure under a red sky, with the speaker urging an unnamed other not to despair as they set out. A refrain promises that shelter and abundance will eventually come. The second verse repeats the structure but shifts the register slightly, framing the exile as chosen rather than forced, before the same refrain closes the song. There is no real change of circumstance across the two verses -- the movement is entirely in how the speaker tries to reframe the same uncertain journey.
How it's built
Two short verses of near-identical length and shape, each followed by the same three-line refrain, with no bridge or resolution beyond repetition. The lack of development -- verse two barely differs from verse one -- mirrors the song's theme of holding a single hope steady rather than progressing anywhere.
Section by section
Opening verse
“Crimson sky”
The image that opens the song is ambiguous by design -- a red sky can signal either a beautiful departure or a warning. Setting sail under it establishes the uncertain tone the whole song will maintain: is this hope or denial?
First refrain
“tide shall turn to shelter us”
The refrain functions as a promise rather than a description -- everything here is future tense and unproven. Its repetition without variation later suggests it is being held onto rather than confirmed by events in the song.
Second verse
“exile's chosen”
Here the speaker reframes displacement as voluntary, a small act of reframing that recasts loss as agency. Whether this is genuine conviction or a comforting fiction is left open, and the song does not resolve the ambiguity.
Closing refrain
By ending on the same unaltered refrain, the song refuses closure or proof that the hoped-for shelter arrives. The repetition becomes the point: the comfort offered is cyclical and sustained by faith rather than by any narrated outcome.
Craft
- extended metaphor
- Sailing, tides, and storms stand in for departure, hardship, and eventual relief, giving an abstract emotional situation a concrete physical shape.
- refrain
- The repeated promise of shelter and overflowing charity functions like a sung creed, its unchanging wording suggesting a belief being rehearsed rather than a fact being reported.
- paradox
- Framing an exile as something chosen works against the ordinary sense of exile as imposed, exposing the strain in the speaker's attempt at consolation.
- imperative address
- Direct commands to the listener not to weep position the speaker as comforter, but the repetition of similar commands hints at anxiety underneath the reassurance.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as a meditation on constructing hope under duress -- the speaker doesn't report safety, only asserts a coming safety, and dresses forced departure up as chosen freedom. A secondary reading is more straightforwardly devotional, with the sea and shelter functioning as near-religious imagery of grace and communal charity; the brevity and hymn-like repetition support this too. Both readings can coexist since the song's ambiguity seems intentional rather than a gap in the writing.
Context
This track originates from Talk Talk's mid-1980s period, collected on the 1998 compilation Asides Besides, which gathered B-sides and rarities from around the It's My Life and The Colour of Spring era. Its simplicity and directness are more in line with the band's earlier, more song-based work than the expansive, texture-driven style they moved toward on Spirit of Eden. I don't have reliable specific biographical or recording details about this particular song, so this context should be treated as general rather than confirmed.
Listen for
- The unchanging refrain and what its repetition suggests about the speaker's certainty or lack of it
- The tension between the imagery of exile and the claim that it is chosen
- How the vocal delivery treats the reassurances -- listen for whether they sound convinced or performed
- The sparse, hymn-like arrangement typical of Talk Talk's mid-80s sound versus their later more atmospheric work
About Talk Talk
Talk Talk were an English post-rock and new wave band formed in 1981 by Mark Hollis, Lee Harris (drums), Paul Webb (bass), and Simon Brenner (keyboards). Initially a synth-pop group, Talk Talk's first two albums, The Party's Over (1982) and It's My Life (1984), reached top 40 in the UK and produced the international hit singles "Talk Talk", "Today", "It's My Life", and "Such a Shame".
1981 - 1991 / United Kingdom
Full biography and catalogue